This Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we would like to introduce two new members of our Scientific and Medical Advisory Board (SMAB) who specialise in paediatric research and surgery.
Their expertise in paediatric brain tumours is helping shape our research strategy and ensuring we invest in the most promising scientific approaches – accelerating progress towards a cure for all types of brain tumours and improving outcomes for paediatric patients and their families.
Professor Sheila Singh
A practising paediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Canada, Professor Singh (pictured top left) leads pioneering research into aggressive primary brain tumours that typically affect children – including the investigation of the mechanisms that drive tumour formation.
Professor Singh is currently Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry at McMaster University in Canada, where she is also Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, and the founding Director of the Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research (CDCR).
In the new year, Professor Singh will be joining us in the UK at King’s College London as Professor of Neuro-oncology and Neurosurgery and the new Joint Head of the School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Head of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre. She will also hold a senior strategic advisory role with Evelina London, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
We’re honoured to welcome Professor Singh to our SMAB. With her expertise in paediatric brain cancer and surgery, cancer stem cell biology and her commitment to translational research, her insights will be invaluable.
Dr Laura Donovan and Dr Sheila Singh
Dr Laura Donovan
Dr Laura K Donovan is Assistant Professor of Paediatric Neuro-oncology at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, where she leads the Childhood Brain Tumour Research Group. Her research is dedicated to improving survival outcomes for children diagnosed with metastatic and recurrent medulloblastoma.
We are especially pleased to welcome Dr Donovan back to the Charity. Having been a valued postdoctoral researcher at one of our Centres of Excellence early in her career, Dr Donovan’s career has gone from strength to strength. Her career so far includes a role as a Fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, and as a Young Investigator within the SU2C-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Immunogenics Paediatric Dream Team, where she played a pioneering role in introducing CAR-T therapies for the effective treatment of paediatric cerebellar brain tumours. Her journey also led to the initiation of a groundbreaking first-in-child clinical trial targeting posterior fossa A ependymomas.
It’s fantastic to have her involved with us again, bringing her expertise and passion for paediatric translational research to our SMAB, as well as providing invaluable insights on the challenges facing early career researchers in the UK today.
Help keep this vital research into childhood brain tumours going by making a donation today.
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